[pothibo]

WYSIWYGs have its own set of problems and this is why most popular websites have WYSIWYG editor but do have Markdown.

Some issues:

  - Portability
  - Error prone (want to close a bold style but can't unless you copy/paste text)
  - Doesn't work well on mobile/tablet
  - Clutter the HTML as the rendering of WYSIWYG needs a lot of wrapper

[debaserab2]

Both Wordpress and Gmail have full blown wysiwyg, and many other sites such as facebook and Twitter have wysiwyg-like features in their messaging/commenting. What site bigger than these use markdown?

[calebegg]

What "wysiwyg-like" features do Twitter and Facebook have? I'm not aware of any.

[debaserab2]

User tagging. It's not a traditional WYSIWYG editor feature, but it means the implementation of the actual editor input field faces the same problems WYSIWYG editors do.

[hobarrera]

> facebook and Twitter have wysiwyg-like features

Yeah, you see plain text, and you get plain text. Big deal.

> What site bigger than these use markdown?

reddit, stackoverflow, discourse, all use MD. Granted, none of them are bigger than gmail (AFAIK), but they do add a pretty huge base.

[debaserab2]

> Yeah, you see plain text, and you get plain text. Big deal.

Nope, not quite. @Tagging someone will suggest and highlight users. Not a full blown WYSIWYG but in the same calibre of technical problems and reasons why people stay away from WYSIWYG.

[pothibo]

Wordpress WYSIWYG (TinyMCE) is notorious for bugs - I experienced them first hand - and it's not a website, it's a software people install. Big difference.

I had forgotten about Gmail, so I guess this is the exception to the rules. On the other hand, markdown is supported on Reddit, Stack Overflow, Github, and many more.

[debaserab2]

Stack Overflow and Github's primary audience is developers. Reddit's started out with a mostly developer audience and still today has a huge crossover. It absolutely makes sense to support mark down if your audience is developers.

I don't find gmail to be an exception to the rule at all - all the big webmail providers offer full WYSIWYG support.

[blumkvist]

>this is why no popular websites have WYSIWYG editor but do have Markdown.

huh?